Jeremiah 5:3a,31

Two phrases stood out to me in Jeremiah chapter 5. The chapter continues Jeremiah’s ‘pessimistic’ speech to Judah, relaying God’s intended judgments and accusations towards the Jews. The very fact that it is continued so far (and shall be for at least a few more chapters I suspect) at the very least shows how important a topic it is to God. It shows the depth of His love for Israel, given that He is trying to warn them and turn them from their evil ways in order to save them.

In verse 3, Jeremiah says this:

‘O LORD, are not Your eyes on the truth?...’ (Jeremiah 5:3a)

This is a stark reminder that God is all about truth. It doesn’t matter whether that truth is hard to accept, easy to accept, obvious or well hidden, controversial, dangerous, life-giving, or mundane. God is about the truth. Therefore we should be studying the Word to find the truth. About as many things as possible. Things like the Gospel are extremely important to know the truth about – that is a life and death (in the spiritual sense) issue. But there are other side-issues everywhere through the Bible, and just because they’re not absolutely critical to our salvation doesn’t mean we should just believe whatever. God is a God of truth, and therefore following His example we should be always trying to sift out truth.

The last verse says:

‘The prophets prophesy falsely,
And the priests rule by their own power;
And My people love to have it so.
But what will you do in the end?’ (Jeremiah 5:31)

A heavy question. When the prophets are prophesying good times ahead, contrary to God’s plan, and the priests rule and judge by their own power (ie. Basically their lineage as priests and their own wisdom), then something is amiss. But one thing is for sure – Israel likes having it that way. Why? Well when you have supposed prophets telling you that everything is okay, and ‘church leaders’ using their own human wisdom to teach people about ‘God’, everything seems fine and everything seems to be getting better, and people feel good about themselves, because human wisdom lifts people up. Of course they loved it. Incidentally, much the same thing is happening in our day. Those who preach the Word are generally saying everything’s getting better, and that we’re all good, and the ‘priests’ are using human wisdom and theories to ‘understand’ the Bible, which gives mankind such a sense of thrill that he can be intelligent enough to understand God. But what will we do in the end? If we base all these things on false prophecy and our own effort, what can we do in the last day? Our own effort won’t hold up. False teaching won’t save us. The truth marches on, and all falseness is cast aside. So it is much better today to believe the true things, although they may be hard, and rely on God rather than ourselves. For in the last day, God will hold us up.